Seven Crows
by Rez1
Summary: We dance round in a ring and suppose While the secret sits in the middle and knows. Missouri Moseley, Sam & Dean Winchester, Bobby Singer, Ellen & Jo Harvelle, and a secret ally. This ensemble piece continues the story titled Duluth.


**Seven Crows**

Missouri Moseley was tearing apart an old dress for the cloth when the cat leapt at a bird flirting outside the window and she, in surprise, upset the button jar at her elbow. And that was the way things happened: one thing led to another. She watched the spilled buttons roll to rest on her grandmother's birchwood worktable: five – no, six, odd sizes, clattered and fell around a chip of carved ivory that had come off one of those fancy blouses the old lady had been partial to. Seven in all.

Now, it never did any good to read too much into one particular thing. People who came to Missouri for help tended to look back on their troubles and say, Lord, if only I'd read the signs; but the truth was simpler. Things didn't foretell and weren't foretold. What people missed, mostly, was already there: what they set in motion, with never a thought, alongside deeds that seemed natural and right. 

Missouri saw what was there, that's all.

She hadn't slept for dreaming in weeks, and six wasn't a number she much cared for, and seven even less, most times. Six buttons rolled out of the jar and found a seventh: Might be greed with its hoard or wealth spreading itself out; or it might be nothing. If there was anything to know, she'd know it.

From behind her came a stuttered mew and the scrabble of claws against the window-glass, and a flair of wings. Missouri shook her head and went back to reclaiming the silk from its dress-shape. She let the buttons lie.

Dean killed the music when Led Zep started in on "Gallows Pole;" he'd pushed his luck with Sam way beyond their usual, to put it mildly, and it wasn't like either of them needed the reminder. He looked over at his brother and shrugged, apologizing. Sort of.

Sam rolled his eyes, like all of a sudden _Dean_ was the one with issues. A little emotion, hardly even a five-minute meltdown and totally friggin' understandable under the circumstances, and – fine. Dean reached down and felt around under the driver's'-side seat and fumbled a tape out of a cracked casing that had lost its cardboard insert fifty thousand miles ago.

Booking south from central Wyoming, the Impala flying like the angel she was, rocking out to "Dirty Laundry" – what's not to love? Dean looked sideways just in time to catch Sammy's lips moving: _Bitch_. He laughed out loud, couldn't help it.

Sam always had wanted to get to the _why_ of everything, but Dean felt like they'd settled that, finally.

He wouldn't say it was a relief, exactly, but there was no question it felt good to've done things right, for once. He knew down to his bones that his father's smile had meant he'd made the right move. Now Sam had a reason to stand up to all that power and everything that craved it; not anything about the past or justice or saving "people," whoever they happened to be. Things were real specific, now: Sam would keep Dean out of hell, and Dean would keep hell out of Sammy.

There was even a failsafe, something all his own. Though he couldn't swear their father hadn't figured even that, pulling strings from the Pit to get the bargain made just right. Because the truth was, Dean didn't know if he had the vision or the brains or the goddamned bare-knuckled _strength_ to keep Sam from doing what he thought was needed, by any means that would get the job done. Unholy power most definitely included.

He shifted in the driver's seat, loosened his hands from their sudden clench around the wheel. He could feel Sam looking at him. It was like he heard what was inside Dean's head, sometimes, now, and Dean clamped down on a little involuntary jolt, remembering the satisfaction on his brother's face as he stared at the cooling body of the last demon-favorite but one. A year would be enough to tell. But at least, if Sam did fall, his big brother would still be right there with him.

What's died should stay dead; that was one thing she and the hunters agreed on. Too damn many complications otherwise. Trouble was, John Winchester always had taken a little too much elbow room on that rule, and not only that one, and now things were worse. And moving toward the truly hellish. Missouri Moseley was beginning to think she'd've done better to let the man wait in her parlor forever before she'd told him what he was facing, all those years ago.

Old Virginia Moseley, sober in striped satin, stared down her twice-great-granddaughter from the framed tintype on the piecrust table she'd used herself, serving tea when her neighbors came to talk. Virginia had kept a quiet house at the end but in her life she'd seen near-disaster the like of which nobody would've lived through, if it had come to pass. Slavery times and war and demonic evil, all three together, and Virginia had written it all down. Like she knew Missouri might need it. Missouri held the compact leatherbound book with its foxed pages lightly in both hands, but she didn't open it.

The rose in her old crystal bud-vase next Virginia's picture nodded suddenly and let go a drift of deep red petals. They fell with a soft noise like a breath. There were seven.

So there was something to know after all.

Ellen Harvelle was sitting in the cab of her stolen truck with no expression Bobby could read. In the directionless light of a cloudy dawn he got a flash of how she'd looked fifteen years ago, when she still had Bill and Bill was friends with John, and Bobby'd done his hunting in real places, with real people, instead of in books and dreams and the tortured minds of demons. Every hunter he knew back then had a thing for Bill Harvelle's whisky-voiced wife, including the women.

"I've got to go back to my place, get some books and a few other things." It sounded like he was implying she should care, which wasn't what he meant, but things were moving and they needed to get on it. "You talk to Jo?" And then he winced a little, then shrugged. If anything'd happened to Jo he needed to know sooner, not later.

"Left her a message," she said, finally. "She should be okay." Which chilled him, because Ellen knew better.

Bobby'd lost a lot of his feel for what regular people did, over the years, and he knew it. Spend enough time by yourself, digging around the edges of deep evil, like he'd learned to, it was inevitable. But he probably had more of the big picture than almost anyone, at this point, and he needed that because even the best hunters had no idea what even a single screw-up could let loose. Hunters didn't have a lot of perspective, generally.

And women like Ellen with daughters like Joanna Beth – he didn't know. 

"Tell you what," he said, reaching for the driver's-side door, but Ellen held up a hand and he stopped, watching a grim little smile curve her mouth. He stared till he figured out that she'd heard the birds start up with sunrise, and another little chill got him moving again.

"You come with me," he said, waving a hand at his own truck. "I need some help with the library and I've got a notion where we need to take this next." He'd tell her to bring the truck so he could chop it but he didn't think there was time.

She must've caught that feeling from him; she dragged a duffel from the seat next to her and got out. She pulled a Remington twelve from behind the bench.

"Need a few things from your armory," she said.

"Sure," he told her, and let her toss the duffel in the truck-bed and climb into the Ford before he pulled his door closed.

Fifteen years ago, she'd beat him twelve rounds at skeet and kicked his ass at darts for good measure.

The smell of an early summer morning caught at him through the open window of the truck and he stuck for a minute, his hand on the key, till he felt her staring. He started it up. There was no time, none, for anything but the road. East, then south, and pray they'd get where they were needed before the storm.

Missouri Moseley still used the sweet water from the rain-barrel to wash important things. Even with whatever poisons the air carried nowadays, it had a virtue to it. She was rinsing the silks that usually wrapped her grandmother's recipe books when a scatter of something dark on the cement near the stationary tub caught her eye.

Just some splashes from the barrel, shaped a little like birds, if she squinted. She didn't count them, nor did she need to.

The Sandpiper was all but empty, what with the freak weather and the steady uptick in the body count in east Duluth. Four in three weeks, as of last night, and Dane would have to close the place down if it kept up. Might be a good thing anyway; in this heat, the usual crowd of hulking wharf-rats with short fuses and no impulse control made trouble a sure thing. Even Arvi Lund and his diehard drinking buddies were off their feed; their jostling had an ugly edge tonight.

Jo picked up another few empties, checked over to see if the woman drinking by herself back against the far wall still had beer in her glass. Nothing ever seemed to faze her, Lenore; her personal private spot looked to be about twenty degrees cooler than the rest of the damn bar, and normally Jo would've gone over and tried to get a little conversation out of her. 

She was too wired herself, tonight, though, and not in a good way, and she had a general idea why that was but hadn't found a damn thing she could act on specifically. All Ash would tell her was to stay put, stay low. "I can help," she'd said for the millionth time. But Ash wouldn't budge, the bastard. And he'd turned off his phone, which really chapped her, but fine. She'd figure it out on her own.

Jo got a polite nod from the back table and turned to see Dane grinning at her with eyes black as oil and a sudden stink curling off him that turned the sultry air poisonous, and everything clicked.

Like throwing a switch: her brain turned over and she pitched her voice above the sudden shatter of glass behind her and said, "In the name of _Azdai_ and _Yazdun_ and _Yaqrun_ and _Prael_ the great and _Ruphael_ and _Sahtiel_ I command you to release —" 

Then she lost touch for a few seconds, being thrown ten feet backward into the post that held up the roof, and when the thing cocked its head at her with that shit-eating grin and said, "Dane, Dean — what's the difference, really?" she knew the hellspawn. She was sure of it.

Arvi was down and his boys were beating on each other. The sounds were sickening. Somebody pulled a knife and she had to ignore that, she had to. Her ribs hurt like a sonofabitch and the smell made her want to spew, but she had to get that note right or the incantation wouldn't work.

When the sick motherfucker watching her smiled wider she knew it probably wouldn't work anyway, but she had to try. She hoped Lenore had slipped out, at least. She grabbed as much breath as she could and hit the note dead on:

"—to release what you hold, _sêmea kenteu kont_ --"

And now she was strangling. Being hauled up the smooth wood of the post toward the ceiling by a chokehold she couldn't even see. God, her mother was going to be so pissed; but she couldn't hold that thought because the demon let Dane's face fade into her father's for just a blink, and she was going to die of pure shitkicking rage if she couldn't get her hands on the thing. She couldn't utter a sound, but --

"--_ konteu kengeu kêrideu darunkô lukuêxi_ --"

The demon moved grotesquely, like a jointed snake, turning and turning against the iron voice that came from nowhere Jo could see. Everywhere. Maybe it was her father: maybe he felt the demon show her his face, somehow, and came back for just this once. But she knew it wasn't true, and the chokehold tightened till she couldn't even hear, the blood was so loud in her ears. She kept saying the words in her head to keep herself in the here and now, though she knew in some corner of her mind that she was kicking like a hanged corpse that didn't know it was dead:

"--Be gone, Nameless, by _Michaêl, Rephaêl, Gabriêl, Ouriêl_ of whose strength you know, _Aô Sabaôth Iaeô eulamô barouch ambra Adônaiou_ by this I command you—"

That's Lenore's voice, you idiot, she told herself. The word _**GO**_ split the heavy sulfur-stink like an axe and she dropped.

When Missouri was a girl she'd wander out past the city limits sometimes, when seeing what was there got to be too hard, and she'd look for a good spot by the railroad track. Lying in the weeds on a cool summer evening, she'd let herself fall into the maelstrom made by a passing freight train till she lived in her five senses and nothing more, and that was good.

But now and then, right afterward, in the settling-back of quiet as the last of the thunder died, the smell of the hot metal track would ring in her head like church-bells and she'd know something, suddenly, that she might not ever have seen otherwise. Like riding that little whirlwind made her able to hold more. She never told her mother. Couldn't, now.

Now the air was heavy and charged so the skin on her arms prickled. Tornado weather, and the smell of ozone made her close her eyes. She felt it again, that shifting of things to make room.

She got up from the kitchen table and opened the front door to see a blue pickup tear up a corner and jolt to a standstill not twenty yards up the street. That was Bobby Singer and — she didn't know the woman, but the yellow-haired girl getting out of the beat-up two-door right behind her was her daughter, no question at all. The third woman, who stared at her coolly, was not even human. Missouri held still because she had to, to see what was there.

From the other end of the street the long winged shape of a black car turned their heads, all of them together. It drifted to a halt and the Winchester boys got out and moved toward her and stopped halfway up the walk. All of them, all seven stood there with the road-dust still hanging in the air and the greenish sky turning everything ashy, and Missouri knew something; what it was she couldn't tell yet, but that would come. 

Sam Winchester was tall as a prairie cottonwood against the ugly sky and he looked straight at her, eyes as hard as granite chips and no dreams in his head, not any more. His hands were red. The shadow behind him was his brother.

End  
_June 8, 2007_  
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Notes

Counting Rhyme  
(from The Folklore of Birds, by Laura C. Martin, 1993)   
Used of magpies or, in the US, crows

One for sorrow, two for mirth,  
Three for a wedding, four for a birth,  
Five for silver, six for gold,  
Seven for a secret not to be told.  
Eight for heaven, nine for hell,  
And ten for the devil's own sel'.

The remixed incantation in Jo and Lenore's part is cribbed shamelessly from Traditions of Magic in Late Antiquity, Curator: Gideon Bohak, Special Collections Library, University of Michigan (1996).


End file.
